by Philip Kerr
Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
DON IRVINE’S STORY: PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
JOHN HOUSTON’S STORY: PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
DON IRVINE’S STORY: PART TWO
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
JOHN HOUSTON’S STORY: PART TWO
DON IRVINE’S STORY: PART THREE
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW
Copyright © 2014 Philip Kerr
The moral right of Philip Kerr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN 978 1 78206 577 7
TPB ISBN 978 1 78206 578 4
EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78206 579 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
Also by Philip Kerr
March Violets
The Pale Criminal
A German Requiem
A Philosophical Investigation
Dead Meat
Gridiron
Esau
A Five Year Plan
The Second Angel
The Shot
Dark Matter: The Private Life of Sir Isaac Newton
Hitler’s Peace
The One from the Other
A Quiet Flame
If the Dead Rise Not
Field Grey
Prague Fatale
A Man Without Breath
Prayer
For Children
One Small Step
Children of the Lamp:
The Akhenaten Adventure
The Blue Djinn of Babylon
The Cobra King of Kathmandu
The Day of the Djinn Warriors
The Eye of the Forest
The Five Fakirs of Faizabad
The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan
For Harry Armfield
‘Write what you know.’
Mark Twain
DON IRVINE’S STORY
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
It was the American novelist William Faulkner who once said that in writing you must kill all your darlings; it was Mike Munns – another writer but, like me, not half as good as Faulkner – who made a joke out of this quote when he telephoned my flat in Putney early that Tuesday morning.
‘It’s me, Mike. I’ve heard of kill your darlings but this is ridiculous.’
‘Mike. What the hell? It’s not even eight o’clock.’
‘Don, listen, switch on Sky News and then call me at home. John’s only gone and killed Orla. Not to mention both of her pet dogs.’
I don’t watch much television any more than I read much Faulkner but I got out of bed and went into the kitchen, made a pot of tea, switched on the telly, and after a few seconds was reading a rolling strip of news across the bottom of the screen: BESTSELLING NOVELIST JOHN HOUSTON’S WIFE FOUND MURDERED AT THEIR LUXURY APARTMENT IN MONACO.
About ten minutes later the twinkly-eyed Irish news anchor was announcing the bare facts of the story before asking a local reporter positioned outside the distinctive glass fan entranceway to the Tour Odéon, ‘What more can you tell us about this, Riva?’
Riva, a fit-looking blonde wearing a black pencil skirt and a beige pussy-cat-bow blouse, explained what was now known:
‘The writer–millionaire John Houston is being sought by Monaco police in connection with the murder of his wife, Orla, whose body was found early this Tuesday morning at their luxury apartment in the exclusive principality of Monaco. It’s believed that her murderer also killed Mrs Houston’s pet dogs. The sixty-seven-year-old Houston, who hasn’t been seen since Friday night, made his fortune as the author of more than a hundred books and is widely considered to be the bestselling novelist in the world, with sales of more than 350 million copies. He regularly tops the Forbes list of the world’s highest-paid authors with earnings estimated at over one hundred million dollars a year. Mrs Houston was aged thirty-seven; as Orla Mac Curtain she was a former Miss Ireland and actor who won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Sophie Zawistowska in Sophie’s Choice: The Musical. Orla Mac Curtain was generally acknowledged to be one of the world’s most beautiful women and had recently written her first novel. The couple were married five years ago at Mr Houston’s home on the Caribbean island of St Maarten. But other than the fact that they are treating her death as a murder the Monaco police have given us no information on the exact circumstances of Mrs Houston’s death. Eamon.’
‘Riva, Monaco isn’t exactly a large place,’ said the news anchor. ‘Have the police any idea where John Houston might have gone?’
‘Monaco’s less than a square mile in area and bordered by France on three sides,’ said Riva. ‘It’s only ten miles from Italy and I’m told you could even be on the North African coast in maybe ten or twelve hours. He owned a boat and he had a pilot’s licence so it’s generally held that he could be absolutely anywhere.’
‘It’s like a scene from one of his books. John Houston was on this programme just last year and I read one of them then and I thought it was very good – although I can’t remember what it was called. He seemed like a very nice fellow. Have the police said how she died?’
‘Not yet, Eamon—’
I turned off the TV, refilled my mug with tea and was scrolling through the numbers in the contact list on my cellphone to find Mike’s telephone number when the landline rang. It was Mike Munns again.
‘Are you watching this, Don?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘But I think you’re jumping to conclusions here, Mike. Just because the Monty cops are looking for John doesn’t mean John actually did murder her. We’ve both written enough of his books to know that’s not how a plot works. The husband’s always the first and most obvious suspect in a case like this. It’s almost a given that he should be the early favourite. Any husband can be made to look as if he might have had a motive to kill his wife. Guilty until proven innocent, that’s how it always works. Mark my words, it will be someone else who turns out to be the murderer. An intruder. Orla’s lover, perhaps. Assuming she had one.’
‘Nil nisi bonum,’ said Munns. ‘But Orla was a gold-plated bitch and I certainly can’t imagine anyone loving her. If John did bump her off then I can hardly say I blame the poor bastard. I’m sure I’d have killed Orla if I’d had to live with her. Jesus, that woman would have tried the patience of Saint Monica. Do you remem
ber the way she used to ignore Starri at the Christmas party?’
A dull and monosyllabic Finn from Helsinki, Starri was Mike’s wife, but I could hardly have faulted Orla for ignoring her at the Christmas party. I was none too fond of Mike’s wife myself. I could easily have ignored her presence in a mug of tea.
I smiled. ‘Say nothing of the dead unless it’s good,’ I said. ‘That’s what nil nisi bonum is supposed to mean, Mike.’
‘I know what it fucking means, Don,’ said Munns. ‘I’m just saying that maybe Orla had it coming. Her and those bloody mutts. And I’m surprised to hear you of all people defending her. She didn’t like you at all. You do know that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I know it but, strictly speaking, I don’t think I was defending her,’ I said. ‘It was John I was defending. Look, our former friend and employer is a lot of things, and many of them have four asterisks on the printed page if it appears in a newspaper, but he’s not a murderer. I’m sure of it.’
‘I’m not so sure. John has one hell of a temper. Come on, Don, you’ve seen him when he gets into one of his rages. He was Captain bloody Hurricane. Strong, too. Those hands of his are as big as car doors. When he makes a fist it’s like a wrecking ball. I wouldn’t like to tangle with him.’
‘You did tangle with him, Mike. As I recall you hit him and for some reason that is still beyond me he didn’t hit you back, which I must say showed a remarkable amount of control on his part. I don’t think I could have been as restrained as he was.’
This was truer than Munns probably realized; I’d always wanted to punch him on the nose – perhaps now more than ever.
‘Yes,’ admitted Munns, ‘but that was only because he was feeling ashamed of the way he’d behaved already. For bawling me out so violently.’
‘In fairness he might also have sacked you for hitting him, Mike,’ I added. ‘And he didn’t do that either.’
‘Only because he needed me to finish a book.’
‘Maybe so, but I think you’re being a little quick to judge him here.’
‘Why shouldn’t I judge him? No one knew John Houston better than us. Look, I don’t owe him a thing. And in the long run, he sacked us all, didn’t he? His friends and colleagues.’
‘Not without compensation.’
‘That was pizza money for a bloke as rich as him.’
‘Come on, Mike, you could buy a whole pizza restaurant for what he gave the four of us.’
‘All right, a watch then. He spent more on wristwatches than he did on our compensation. You can’t deny that.’
I heard Mike’s cellphone ringing – ‘Paperback Writer’ by the Beatles – on the other end and waited a moment while he answered it.
‘Peter,’ I heard Munns say. ‘Yes, I have. He does, I’m on the line to him now. I’d better call you back. No, wait, I’ve a better idea. Why don’t the three of us meet for lunch? Today. You can? Good. Hang on a mo, I’ll ask Don.’
Munns came back to me on the landline. ‘It’s Stakenborg,’ he said. ‘Look here, why don’t we all have lunch at Chez Bruce to talk about it.’
Chez Bruce is a restaurant in south-west London that was conveniently close to where both Mike Munns and Peter Stakenborg lived, in Wandsworth and Clapham.
‘What’s there to talk about?’ I said. ‘She’s dead. John’s missing. Maybe he’s dead, too, only we just don’t know it yet.’
‘Come on, Don, don’t be such a miserable cunt. Besides, it’s been months since the three of us sat down and talked. It’d be good to catch up. Look, I’ll pay for it, if that’s what’s bothering you.’
It wasn’t. ‘Lunch gets in the way of my writing, that’s all. I won’t be good for anything after I’ve drunk a bottle of wine with you bastards.’
‘You’re working on something?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case I insist,’ said Munns. ‘I’ll do anything to interfere with a fellow writer’s work. Come on. Say yes.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Yes.’
‘Great. The set lunch is a bargain. Pete? You still there? We’re on. Don? Pete? Chez Bruce. See you there at one.’
*
In the culinary wasteland that is south-west London Chez Bruce is, quite justifiably, up itself; but while the kitchen is undeniably excellent it isn’t a smart kind of place. The clientele is mostly pairs of bored housewives spending their city husbands’ modest bonuses, final salary pensioners blowing their ill-gotten gains and middle-aged couples celebrating – if that’s the right word – Pyrrhic wedding anniversaries.
Outside, on the narrow main road, was a long line of near-stationary traffic and beyond this lay the large expanse of unfeasibly green and pleasant parkland that is Wandsworth Common. Only the week before summer had finally arrived, but already it was looking like it had jumped on the first plane and was now headed somewhere warmer. They certainly hadn’t seen much of the sun the previous weekend in Fowey, which was where I had a holiday home in Cornwall called Manderley after the house in Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. I think all holiday homes in Cornwall are probably called Manderley.
Naturally I was the first to arrive at Chez Bruce, as I had travelled the furthest distance. I took a look at the wine list and ordered a bottle of Rully: at sixty quid it was hardly the most expensive wine on the list but it would certainly spoil us for anything cheaper and could hardly fail to deter Mike Munns from ordering too many more. I was determined to leave the lunch sober – more or less – especially since I had come by car.
Peter Stakenborg was the next to arrive, a tall, slightly anxious-looking man wearing a badger’s coat on his head, a blue velvet jacket, a white shirt and brown corduroy trousers.
‘Christ, what a morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve been fielding telephone calls from Hereward Jones, Bat Anderton and the Evening fucking Standard. You?’
Hereward Jones was Houston’s literary agent; and B. A. T. ‘Bat’ Anderton was his publisher. I shook my head.
‘Didn’t answer the phone. I figured it was probably just people wanting to feed me gossip and speculation about John.’ I shrugged. ‘Besides, I never answer the phone when I’m trying to work.’
‘Yes, I heard you were working on something.’
‘I’m trying. Put it that way. I was in Fowey for the weekend but it wasn’t working there either so I came back. I kept looking out the window and marvelling that it could rain anywhere quite as much as Cornwall.’
‘A novel?’
I nodded and poured Stakenborg a glass of the Rully.
‘What’s it about?’
‘I’ve already forgotten. When I’m away from my desk it really doesn’t exist at all. That way I can’t talk the book away. I think all writing should be conducted like a kind of exorcism.’
‘Who said that?’
‘I did, Peter.’
‘You mean you’ve actually got a plot – an outline and everything?’
‘Not exactly. I’m just writing, seeing where that takes me.’
‘I tried that once.’
‘And what happened?’
‘To be honest with you, Don, very little.’ Stakenborg made a face. ‘Without one of John’s leather-bound outlines to work from it was just typing really. And it didn’t seem to go anywhere at all. Like trying to drive to the Hay Festival without a satnav. I got lost before I had even started. The man has an extraordinary capacity for creating stories out of thin air. His plots are like Rolex fucking watches. I bet you could lock him in a room with a sheet of paper and a pencil and an instruction to give you a five-hundred-word plot about – about this wine, and he could probably do it. Not only that but he’d actually start to believe it was a good plot, too. I’ve seen that happen. A germ of an idea that becomes a fully-fledged plot in the space of one lunch. I don’t know how he does it.’
I nodded, recognizing this description of our erstwhile employer. ‘That’s true, although I’ve seen him get carried away with an idea, too. So much so that he starts to believe an id
ea might actually be true.’
‘So, what’s your take on today’s sensational news?’
‘Until today becomes tomorrow I think it’s far too early to say.’
‘Come on, Don. You know him better than anyone. From the beginning, as it were. You must have an opinion about what happened. I’m afraid that Twitter has already got John bang to rights.’
‘That’s it then. You might as well fetch the black cap and hand it to the judge. He must be guilty if a few tweets have said so.’
‘It’s more than a few,’ said Stakenborg. ‘God, the people of this country are without mercy. Especially the writing sister-hood. You’d think Orla had got them the vote the way they’re writing about her now. But really. What do you think?’
‘Yes, Don. Do tell.’ Mike Munns sat down opposite me, poured himself a glass and then measured the Burgundy’s golden colour against the white of the tablecloth. He was short, with floppy hair, large heavy-framed lightly tinted glasses and a checked suit that belonged in the window of a charity shop; but Munns had a personality that seemed the very opposite of charitable. ‘The least you can do is give us your honest opinion. Guilty or not guilty?’
‘For fuck’s sake. With friends like you, what chance does the poor bugger have of clearing his name?’
‘Friend? Who said I was his friend? I thought I already made it quite clear that John Houston was no friend of mine.’
I let that one go. Lunch was effectively over if I didn’t. I shook my head. ‘Beyond the few facts that were reported on Sky News at eight o’clock this morning there isn’t much to go on, yet; surely we can all agree on that.’
‘It so happens that’s why I’m a little late,’ announced Munns. ‘Some cop from the Sûreté Publique just made a statement on TV outside John’s building in Monty. Orla and the dogs were shot with a nine-millimetre handgun; and one of John’s cars – the Range Rover it looks like – is missing from the garage. The cops have named Houston as a prime suspect and issued an international warrant for his arrest.’
‘I always liked that car,’ said Stakenborg. ‘That’s the one I’d have taken from the garage if I had to lit out of somewhere in a hurry.’